Abstract

We report a method to determine the radiative efficiency (RE) of a semiconductor by using room-temperature excitation-dependent photoluminescencemeasurements. Using the ABC model for describing the recombination of carriers, we show that the theoretical width of the RE-versus-carrier-concentration (n) curve is related to the peak RE. Since the normalized external quantum efficiency, EQEnormalized, is proportional to the RE, and the square root of the light-output power, , is proportional to n, the experimentally determined width of the EQEnormalized-versus-n curve can be used to determine the RE. We demonstrate a peak RE of 91% for a Ga0.85In0.15N quantum well.

Authors from Sandia National Laboratories and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were supported by Sandia's Solid-State Lighting Sciences Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract No. DE-AC04-94AL85000.